


Psycho Killer

by Smileymask



Series: Hanahaki [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dehumanization, Gen, Human Trafficking, Minor Character Death, Mutilation, Origin Story, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:41:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25570738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smileymask/pseuds/Smileymask
Summary: One scenario on how Kid and Killer might have met.Spoilers up to Chapter 944.Please mind the tags.
Relationships: Eustass Kid & Killer
Series: Hanahaki [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853155
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	Psycho Killer

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Dark and graphic. Please mind the tags.

  
Francis could overhear two of Dad’s subordinates talking about the recent purchase.

“Real piece of work, that one. Damn near tried to bite my hand off when I cuffed him.”

“Why'd the boss pick that kid up anyway? There's no way anyone would buy him; nobody buys boys.”

“Well, I think he owed a favor to Eustace, and he was getting even by taking the kid off his hands.”

“Why would Eustace even want to sell his damn kid off? To here of all places?”

“Kid ate a Devil Fruit that he was trying to sell, apparently. Said that was the last straw.”

“Devil Fruit user might be some kind of selling point, I guess. But the kid’s got a damn broken leg! Are we supposed to keep him fed until the leg heals?”

“Up for the boss to decide. Eustace has gone off the deep end, though, he's been saying that the kid has Conquerer's Haki.”

The other man burst into laughter at that. “Hell, we got a real Pirate King in our stock, eh? I mean, I don’t know what Eustace was thinking; that would make him sell for less, not more.”

“Yeah, the guy’s a loon. I mean, he sold his own damn kid off so what can you expect from that kind of trash?”

The laughter got farther away and Francis could relax. He was waiting to see if the lunch room would be empty soon so he could get something to eat. 

Francis was hungry, but he dared not go in while Culliford was there. The man had taken a liking to him and would always try to corner Francis when he saw him.

Culliford made no sign of leaving, so Francis gave up and went to feed the merchandise. They had to be fed and the trays cleared by one o’clock or Francis would be in for it.

As he distributed the slop, Francis read the label on the cage with the newest purchase:

_Eustace_

_Human_

_Male_

_Age 7_

_Devil Fruit: unknown_

There was a small boy there, staring out the bars at him with a feral gold gaze. One of his eyes was swollen shut. He was shackled in seastone, as was the procedure for Devil Fruit users, but he couldn’t walk anyway, since Francis could see that his leg was in a cast.

Francis wordlessly ladled in some of the slop in the feeding tray.

He waited while the prisoners ate, and at 12:40 collected the trays whether they were finished with it or not. The other prisoners did not look up in any way when he passed, but the boy still stared out, emotionlessly. He would learn not to do that soon enough.

* * *

Dad hated the way he laughed, said it was disgusting, because he said it was like how Mom laughed.

Francis couldn't really remember Mom laughing much at all, though.

When Mom was around Dad didn’t beat him as much. 

He still missed his mom. She’d made him his favorite pasta sometimes, and she’d read the Alabastan Myths to him, and told him stories about the Pirate King and Whitebeard.

But she left with Parker in the end. Dad had gone ballistic after that. 

He wondered why she couldn’t have taken him along. It wasn’t until much later in his life that he realized that Parker, the man his mother had left with, wouldn’t have wanted a tag-along kid.

When he'd been pulled out of school two years ago Francis had actually been glad, because the kids could tell a neglected kid when they saw one and they weren't kind to weak kids.

They made fun of his laugh, called him a psycho killer. It came from some song that had been on the radio those days. They sang that whenever they saw him. Francis hated whoever wrote that song.

But now he’d rather go to school again, have his Mom back.

* * *

Francis was needed around the business, Dad said, and he was given the job to feed the merchandise and to empty the waste, and clean out the cages when they were empty.

A smell hung around the cages that Francis could block out by this point.

He had nothing to do between lunch and dinnertime, as the cages wouldn’t be emptied until the next auction.

He hid in the broom closet. It was the only place he felt safe, among the mops and brooms and buckets, because he was the only one who used them anyway. He turned on the light switch and read the only books he had, _Alabastan Myths_ , a volume of fairy tales, and _History of the South Blue for Children_.

He needed to be on the lookout, though, and make sure he was on time for dinner. His dad told him he needed to be good or otherwise he’d be sold off to be a slave. 

Francis prayed daily to the heavens in thanks that he had not been sold off. Whatever his life was now it would be ten times worse if he became a slave. Dad had made him look while they cut a slave’s Achilles tendons, and told him the same thing would happen to him if he was sold off.

Outright mutilation or branding was rare, to be fair, as owners tended to want to mark their slaves with their own brands and most slaves needed the use of all their limbs to have product value.

If it did happen, it was either cutting off the thumbs or severing the Achilles tendons. Those with unquantified Devil Fruit powers had seastone inserted into their skin.

The sight of the blood welling up, and the knowledge that the man would never walk right again, had filled Francis with horror.

* * *

It was approaching dinnertime, so Francis snuck out of the broom closet and into the merchandise room.

Culliford was waiting for him there.

“Where have you been sneaking off to? I’ve been looking all over for your pretty little face.”

Francis looked up and saw the lust in the man's face, the bone-chilling, inhuman lack of remorse in his eyes.

Francis knew he was powerless in the face of such evil. 

He endured the fumbling movements and discomfort, blocking out the man's grunts.

There were no words to describe how dirty he felt. How profoundly wrong his body and himself seemed to him, for being the target of this kind of unnatural desire. How stupid and weak he felt, for not having been able to prevent this from happening to himself.

There was nothing to do but take it. He had been beaten, once, for mentioning a similar incident to his father.

He picked himself up from the floor after the man left. The slaves-to-be did not look up from their cages. 

Except the kid.

The boy was staring at him out the bars, without pity or judgment.

“What are you looking at!” Francis kicked at the bars of the cage, blind with shame and rage. He wished he could drag out the kid and pummel him for daring to look at him in his debasement.

“You're nothing but a slave, your own dad sold you to be a slave! How dare you look at me that way!”

“But you’re a slave too,” the child said.

That brought him, literally, to his knees. The strength went out of his legs and his mind shorted out.

He rose to his feet again in a daze and went to fetch the slop from the kitchen.

* * *

As Francis waited for the prisoners to eat, he overheard more conversation between his dad’s subordinates.

It had been decided that the kid would remain here until his leg healed. He would get his seastone implant tonight, and while they were at it he would have his Achilles tendons cut as well.

The news made Francis sick to his stomach. He'd hated that kid so much when he'd said those words to him, but even he didn't deserve to have that happen to him.

He hovered around the door of the merchandise room after he cleared out the trays, dreading to look at the sight but not wanting to leave the kid alone, either.

The men entered and he could hear the kid screaming and struggling.

Then a wave of some power that Francis had never felt before hit him in the face, and it felt like all the air was sucked out of his lungs for a moment. Francis rushed into the room and saw the kid on the floor, tendons mercifully intact, and the men, including his Dad, lying unconscious all around him.

The child looked at Francis.

“You're strong,” the child said. “Please help me; they'll be up in a few minutes. Let me out of the cuffs.”

For the first time in his life Francis had a choice, between helping the kid and helping his Dad.

It was difficult. Francis hovered at his Dad’s belt where he knew the keys and daggers were.

His Dad’s hand caught his wrist in a weak grip. “Francis, you remember where you belong--”

Those words made an indescribable rage boil up inside him. He pulled out a dagger from his dad’s belt and brought it down on his neck, with a savage sort of triumph. He did not have the arm strength to cut through much, but it did cut through an artery and his Dad bled out rapidly.

He took the keys and hurriedly took off the kid’s cuffs.

An unholy deafening racket rang out.

The cages were ripped out of the very floor with the inhabitants still inside. Screams were drowned in the booming of metal, the cages pounded onto the floor over and over at crushing force, seemingly defying the laws of physics.

He and the kid were the only ones left untouched in the maelstrom of metal, safe in the eye of the storm.

The silence afterwards was deafening. The stench of blood and bowels was suffocating. Prisoner and jailer alike were dead, to a person, beyond all recognition. 

He looked at the dagger in his hand. 

He hadn't needed to do that. There had been no strength to his father's grip. And he would have been killed by the torrent of metal soon after, anyway.

He did not regret that his father was dead; but he could not forgive himself for the single moment of exhilaration he had felt, as he brought the knife down. It would haunt him until well into his late teenage years.

The kid sat preternaturally calm and poised amidst the carnage.

“What's your name? Francis?” The child asked.

“Who cares,” he said, “I'm nothing but a father-killer.”

“I'll call you Killer then. I want to leave. You'll come with me, right?”

It felt good, and right, to do so. In this world, where it turned out that he had been a slave all along, and where he had killed his own father with gladness in his heart, he no longer knew what it meant anymore - good or bad, right or wrong. He was no longer sure of anything in this world. All he could be sure of was following this child with the Conquerer's Haki.

“Don’t feel bad,” said the kid. “We’re strong and they were weak. You remember what they did to you when they thought they were stronger than you.”

He wasn’t entirely convinced, but he took the kid’s hand and helped him up to his feet.

They left the human warehouse together, the Eustace kid and the father-killer.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for the disturbing content, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Kid and Killer’s backstories do turn out to be very dark - Kid's very cynical worldview as well as Killer going to such lengths to hide his laugh suggest a deeply traumatic background to me. 
> 
> This was originally a flashback in another fic, A Clean Break, but I separated it as it was beyond the scope of the other one. This is also compatible with Killer’s flashback in another fic of mine, A Miracle.


End file.
